Digestible Asianness: Violence in Food Culture

‘I hope they bring some satays for us’

On August 15, 2025, I was working in a museum next to Dam Square in Amsterdam. Before starting each shift, the team I was a part of always received the most important notices of the day during our morning briefing. During this particular briefing, our manager told us that there would be an event happening on Dam Square in the afternoon. Being half-Indonesian, I knew this event had to be the national commemoration for the end of WW2, in particular, the liberation of the former Dutch Indies. Luckily, for my colleagues who didn't know this, our manager explained. In response to hearing that it would be an Indonesian event, one of my colleagues – a Dutch man in his seventies – said: ‘Gosh, I hope they bring some satays for us'.  I started wondering why the first thing anyone could think of in the context of a commemoration event – a moment in which people mourn the death and remember those who suffered during war – would be food. I also wondered if it would ever be possible for this particular thought to occur during the National Remembrance Day on the fourth of May,  the nationwide moment when Dutch society mourns its wartime victims of WW2. 

I was unable to answer these questions in a way that made sense to me. Yet I wished to uncover these hidden expectations of being Indonesian, or more broadly speaking, being Asian in Dutch society and how this related to food specifically. To do this and to understand this interaction that I had, I turned to the arts.